The Falklands War 1982 [Paperback]

If you are looking for a narration of the Falklands War from the English point of view, this is the right book for you: brief, exciting and with many illustrations. However, if you want an exhaustive, updated and impartial chronicle of this conflict, you will be disappointed with this work of Duncan Anderson.
The reasons are not difficult to guess. In the section "Select bibliography", the author mentions NINE books; only "half-book" (the work of Virginia Gamba-Stonehouse with Lawrence Freedman) have Argentine origins. Hardly surprising, the text of Anderson is strongly unilateral and full of errors. Here a brief selection:
3) Page 11: no mention to the first English invasion of Buenos Aires in 1806 under the command of Popham and Beresford (the same expedition who occupied Cape Colony before)
"...an along with [Argentine] independence in 1820..."
Argentine independence took place in 1816, not 1820
"In 1831 the American frigate Lemington..."
The US-American ship's name was Lexington
8) Page 25: "...Harriers...would have to face some 120 Argentine machines of equal of superior performance."
A quarter of these 118 Argentine aircraft were COIN/trainer turboprops (Pucará & Turbo Mentor) with a maximum speed of 500 km/h. Only 32 machines (8 Mirage III and 24 Daggers) were theoretically superior to the Sea Harrier, but they operated at the limit of their range (they wouldn't perform any air refuelling) and their missiles were very inferior to the AIM-9L Sidewinder
12) Page 32 (photo): "Douglas A-4C Skyhawks."
These are A-4B of the Grupo 5 de Caza (Fight Group 5)
14) Page 35 (map): "Task Group 79.1 & 2 (Aircraft-carrier and 2 destroyers)" and "Task Group 79.4 (3 frigates)"
These groups included four destroyers (Hércules, Santísima Trinidad, Comodoro Py and Comodoro Seguí) and three corvettes (Drummond, Granville and Guerrico)
15) Page 37: "Unknown to the RAF, the Argentine engineers who had constructed the airfield had made a mistake when plotting its position on survey maps. As a consequence, the airfield's position on maps the crew was using was 1,000 m from its actual position."
Really? Perhaps the Argentine engineers made this error on purpose for the British maps; or perhaps that was only an excuse of the British pilots for their failure to hit a 1,250 m runway meanwhile their Argentine colleagues hit frigates that were ten times smaller...
"...one bomb hit the centre of the runway, cratering it badly and ensuring it could not be used by fast jets."
The bomb hit only a border of the runway, that was never able to operations with fast jets because it was still too short
17) Page 40: "She [the Belgrano] sank within 45 minutes, with the loss of 368 lives."
The Belgrano sank within one hour, with the loss of 323 lives
18) Page 41: "During the next 24 hours Lynx helicopters sank and disabled two Argentine patrol boats on their way to the islands."
No Argentine patrol boat was sunk. The Skua missiles were unable to sink the 800-ton Alférez Sobral: damaged and with seven killed it was able to reach Puerto Deseado without help. The Sobral wasn't on the way to the island but on the search of the crew of the Canberra shot down at 1 May: the two airmen were never found
19) Page 43: "The first success came on 9 May when Coventry, a Type 42, shot down two Skyhawks and a Puma helicopter."
The two A-4C were not hit by Sea Darts missiles but they crashed due to bad weather (like two Sea Harriers three days before)
"...a bomb from the second attack wave hit Glasgow, but passed through her without exploding."
Right, but Glasgow was so badly damaged that some days later it had to take the way back to England
21) Page 50: "In fact, the settlements [at Goose Green] held 1,500; with added reinforcements the number was to rise to 1,630."
At 26 May, the settlements held only 845 men (included 202 ground crew from the airfield). At 28 May two reinforcements came: a platoon of the Regiment 25 (44 men) and the Company B of the Regiment 12 (132 men)
23) Page 53: "As he [Jones] single-handedly stormed an Argentine trench from the rear, he was cut down by a burst of machine gun fire from behind".
I don't want to offend the memory of "H" Jones, but I must tell you the other version of his death:
As the Company A was stopped by the fire of the defenders of Darwin in a path between two minefields, three Paras took off und shuttled their helmets. The Argentine officer, Lt Juan José Gómez Centurión, accepted the parliament's offer and met one of the enemy soldiers who introduced him as Lieutenant Colonel Jones and demanded the surrender of the Argentines. Surprised and annoyed, Gómez Centurión broke up the parliament and both officers went back to their men. At this moment a British MG that used the break to flank the Argentine's position opened fire and hit three Argentine soldiers. Gómez Centurión saw Jones behind a fence and fired twice with his rifle: Jones was hit from a bullet in the neck and died.
24) Page 54: "...the Argentines [suffered] 55 dead and 86 wounded. In addition, 1,536 physically uninjured Argentines became prisoners of war."
The Argentines suffered 50 dead and almost 120 men were wounded. Only 1,083 soldiers surrendered
"...the Argentines...were...equipped with automatic weapons...and supported by mortar and artillery fire and ground attack aircraft."
The Argentines had only four machine guns (one 12,7mm and three 7,62 mm), whereas their enemy had 56 MG (14 to 1). As the Argentines, the Paras had 105mm guns (at the end six), 81 mm mortars (at the end eight) and air-ground support. And they had something that the Argentines didn't have: 12 granade-throwers M79, MILAN and Blowpipes missiles and naval fire support from the 114mm gun of the frigate Arrow
26) Page 58: "The frigate Cardiff, returning from bombarding Stanley, sighted the landing craft."
Cardiff was not a frigate but a Type 42 destroyer. By the way, one hour before a British Gazelle helicopter was shot down by "over-anxious" crew of Cardiff: four men were killed
27) "The landing craft [Foxtrot 4] was saved from almost certain destruction by the arrival of two Sea Harriers..."
The Foxtrot 4 was sunk together with the transported material
29) "...British gunners were trained to a much higher standard."
The principal advantage of British artillery was the 17 km range of their guns compared with the 10,5 km range of Argentine OTO Melara howitzers
"...additional fire support was to be provided by automatic 4." guns of four warships..."
The standard gun of British warships is 4,5in (114mm)
36) Page 86: "Nearly 100 Argentine dead were found in positions on the ridge [Wireless Ridge]..."
The Regimiento 7 lost in Longdon and Wireless Ridge only 35 killed
Finally: in this book I couldn't find any reference to the help of the Chilean dictatorship to Britain (military intelligence, aggressive movements of his army and navy against Argentine, a British Recce-Canberra unit that operated with Chilean colours from the Patagonia, etc): this help was acknowledged in public by Margaret Thatcher in 1999, when her friend, ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, was arrested in England.

More than twenty years after the conflict, such inaccuracy is simply unacceptable. It is lamentable that Anderson, in spite of his notables academic records (he is head of the Department of War Studies at Sandhurst), has been incapable to write a true valuable work on this tragic conflict.

I wanted to read a concise overview of the Falklands war to add to what I remembered from the time. The Osprey books generally do a good job with quick overviews and this one was just what I wanted with the right amount of detail.

I found this to be extremely informative as well a gripping read. Excellently written and involves the reader to make the material come alive. If you have any interest in this conflict this is *the* authoritative read.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 5 reviews  4.0 out of 5 stars